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Oprah Winfrey is being universally praised for her performance in Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

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, Postmedia News

NEW YORK — Oprah Winfrey can’t help being Oprah — even among famous actors attending a Waldorf Astoria Hotel news conference for Lee Daniels’ The Butler.

The historical drama, which opens Aug. 16, profiles the life and times of a White House butler (Forest Whitaker) as an observer to pivotal moments in 20th Century America. Winfrey plays the butler’s wife.

Besides Winfrey, Whitaker was in attendance at the gathering. So was Daniels, Mariah Carey (who plays the butler’s mother), Lenny Kravitz and Cuba Gooding Jr. (the butler’s colleagues) Terrence Howard (a neighbour), James Marsden (president John F. Kennedy), and assorted support players.

Half way through the Q & A one of the actors struggled with a key point of view on African-Americans’ goal to earn racial equality.

Sensing the meander, Winfrey turned to him and in subtle fashion brought him back to his point by asking a few Oprah-style questions that nudged but didn’t push.

It wasn’t her show but it might as well have been.

Her performance as Gloria, the butler’s wife, is scene-stealing and receiving preview raves, as well.

It’s amazing when you consider that she last emoted on the big screen in 1998’s Beloved and before that in 1985’s The Color Purple (which earned her a supporting actress Oscar nomination).

Still, the 59-year-old almost declined The Butler invitation because she had the agenda-filling concern of starting her OWN network.

Her friend Daniels was persuasive, and she admitted that in the end she was thrilled to reunite with her Oscar-honoured Precious director.

“I had worked with him (as producer) on Precious behind the scenes, so I wanted the opportunity to be in his hands,” said Winfrey adding with a sly grin: “Contrary to what people assume about me, I’m really not a control freak.”

The all-encompassing civil rights subject matter was the other irresistible selling point, and she believed that portion of the film journey was in good hands.

For his part, the filmmaker said that Winfrey understood what he had felt during the four years of developing The Butler. “It’s not a movie, it’s a movement,” noted the director.

“Lee Daniels is a truth seeker,” said Winfrey. “He will literally not let any of his actors get away with a breath that is a false moment.” Based on a 2008 Washington Post piece commemorating the election of President Barack Obama, the biopic is loosely drawn from the life of the real White House butler Eugene Allen, featured in the article. He served American presidents with distinction from 1952 to 1986.

In the movie, the butler’s behind-the-scenes White House job and family life are based on composites and include some dramatic licence.

The revised version includes the butler’s unhappy but strong-willed wife (Winfrey), an activist Freedom-Rider-turned-Black-Panther son (David Oyelowo) and a younger sibling who decides to fight for his country in Vietnam.

U.S. presidents are played by familiar faces. Robin Williams is Dwight D. Eisenhower, Marsden plays John F. Kennedy. Liev Schreiber is Lyndon B. Johnson, while John Cusack is Richard Nixon. Alan Rickman portrays Ronald Reagan and Jane Fonda is his wife Nancy.

The focus, however, is concentrated on America’s social and political turmoil throughout the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, and culminating with the Obama victory.

Some sequences depicting racism are graphic and unsettling, but Winfrey felt they were necessary.

“I’m a student of my own history, of African-American history,” Winfrey said.

“I believe that when you know who you are, you will have the ability to move forward with not just the strength of yourself, but the strength of your entire ancestry.”

By spreading the word in an entertaining way, The Butler, “offers an opportunity for the rest of the world to experience a part of our history.”

What impressed Winfrey more is that the African-Americans depicted in the film have the same hopes, dreams and doubts of all Americans.

She was also proud of the way females are defined in The Butler.

“I wanted to allow the spirit and integrity of all of the African-American women who stood by their men and held their families together with their grip, and allowed their own dreams to be oppressed,” Winfrey said.

And while The Butler shows how African-Americans had to present “a duality of faces” in mainstream America if they wanted to get ahead, the media mogul maintained that she never had to pretend.

That goes back to her early professional days as a 19-year-old TV reporter in Nashville, Tenn. when she interviewed activist Jesse Jackson.

“He said to me then, ‘One of your gifts is to be able to be yourself on TV,’” recalled Winfrey, who went on to her massively popular syndicated talk show 10 years later.

“I have made a career on my own authenticity. I don’t have one face that I present to the white world and another to the black world.”

She smiled again: “I talk to my dogs the same way I’m talking right now.”

That doesn’t mean she forgets the past and what The Butler underscores.

“I say that with great pride and homage and honour to the people who were the generation before me,” said Winfrey. “I am a daughter of a maid, and my grandmother was a maid, and her mother was a maid, and her mother was a slave.

“Because of the courage and conviction of generations, shoulders that we all stood on, I never had to do it.”

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